Recently Necromag was granted the irresistible opportunity to meet and interview the man behind the aggrotech kings Combichrist themselves, the one and only Andy Laplegua. Read on to hear what the quirky and friendly Scandinavian  scamp had to say when Necromag prodded and pried their way into his head.

Combichrist photo by Lithium Picnic

Necromag: What is Combichrist? Who do you consider Combichrist to be?

Andy Laplegua: Its always the most difficult question isn’t it? Considering none of us are actually from the industrial scene originally, were all from a hardcore, punk rock and metal background and people just happened to listen to some electronics eventually, then it just kind of combined but without guitars, so, its always hard to say, some people say, “oh yeah its an industrial band” and then for us its like, no were not really an industrial band, just like, y’know…

How do you feel about being referred to the Aggrotech genre?

Well I guess I hadn’t have known what the other bands that call themselves aggrotech sound like I guess it would have been a fitting description, just because its aggressive and electronic, but id say were more like a electronic hardcore band then anything else.

You dabbled with guitars in your previous single mix with Wes Borland; do you now consider yourself industrial using guitars?

I’m still open to everything, that was the whole point to why I started Combichrist in the first place, the start album was very noisy defiantly more industrial than it is now, very instrumental and noisy, the hole point was to do exactly what I wanted to do and to create music that I would like to listen to on every single album and not stuck with a specific style or stuck with anything specific, it was like, I wanted to do something that I wanted to listen to, so if I felt like, alright I felt like playing guitars on this, I would do it, I just never felt the need to do it, then we experimented a little bit with it and there is actually – on our album, there is a guitar element on all the albums its just been tweaked out, and its not like riffs and stuff iv just been making sound stage and stuff like this with it. So there is guitars on most of our album production, and we love having Wes around, he’s been playing live with us as well, as long as he’s not working with his other stuff we are more than happy to work with him again.

I’ve heard a lot of references to comics before and after the band, are these comics’ projects you’re actively involved in and are you still interested in comics generally?

For sure! I mean, the whole Combichrist concept was built on a character, at least in my head (laughs) in my head it was always the character, not me obviously, I’m not the violent type, just because John Carpenter y’know… he doesn’t behave like Freddy Kruger, you know what I mean? And that’s how I feel about Combichrist too, it’s a character, the same thing with the lyrics and everything, I’ve gotten a lot of shit for it, and I was like, you’re not going to complain to horror movie makers! It’s not like it’s a message, its entertainment! The whole comic book thing, hopefully will come together, I’ve been planning to do it forever, to actually make a comic book with the characters

You say it’s based on this character, are most of the references based on this character rather than having any basis in your own life??

It’s a little bit mixed you’ll put some of your personal influences and stuff like this into the character, for sure, and there’s definitely a part of me in the Combichrist character, and definitely a part of the Combichrist character in me! But nothing to the extreme, y’know. Some songs are more me than others, some songs more the character. The previous album Today we are all demons, is definitely more towards me and my own demons other than the characters and for the new album its 95% me.

From that basis do you feel your other projects have other sources of inspiration?

This is one of the things that is going on right now, one of the things is that… well I don’t want to say I have multiple personalities here (laughs) but with Icon of Coil, its done, ill do a couple of live shows here and there but musically its done, Scandy is done, I might do a couple of appearances but I’m done with the project. As far with PanzerAG as far as, for now, is out of my life. They all have different aspects of my self and my life in them, like the Panzer AG is more of the personal, more of the darker side and more of the personal side, then Scandy more of the party and funnier side, and then Combichrist which is more like the aggressive, exaggerated comic book version of me (laughs) but now I’m bringing it all into Combichrist, so its getting a lot more personal, and it kinda merges, all into one, I have more freedom to be more personal, to do the music in a little bit more different way, in a way I really want to, without having it in the back of my head all the time, oh maybe I should have done this with Panzer AG, and putting it altogether somehow.

So Combichrist is the main focus right now rather than having any new projects?

The only thing I’m really doing now is Combichrist. I have another band called Scandinavian Cock which is a punk rock/rock and roll band. But you know, that is so far from anything else I’m doing that its just pure punk rock/ rock and roll y’know?

Considering you’ve been touring quite heavily since the last album, including the Rammstein tour, are you happy to tour this constantly and do you find it tiring?

Well, I guess that the days of the 80’s or 90’s, I don’t know when, where bands could record an album and live off of it are just gone, you know? You have to be out there constantly, you have to be out their touring. And I’m not talking financially; I mean to survive as a band. There are so many bands out there and you just to be able to continue s not only a necessity but it’s also a privilege. It’s like as long as you get going and people want to be a part of it you just keep on going and going. And um, I don’t know what I would be doing if I wasn’t constantly touring.

Were the Rammstein dates you first arena dates?

Yes definitely the first arena gigs. I mean we’ve done similarly sized shows for festivals before, but as for normal shows where there are just two bands, they were the first arena shows.

Given your experience with both formats what do you prefer now? Club or arena gigs?

You can’t really compare it. Y’know? It’s so different. Certain days you’ll prefer something. Certain other days you’ll prefer something else. It’s kinda like comparing arenas to clubs is almost like comparing making love and having sex. It’s the same thing but a different approach, but both are great. It’s really hard to compare it. One thing is really close and intimate the other is full of energy and overwhelming almost. It’s really hard to compare those two things and I love them both. Some of our most fun shows, some of the best shows, its small clubs like the one we’re playing today, like small places like this, its really small… But some of the best shows are in small clubs like this because it gets more intimate.

Do you feel like the audience plays a significant role in a Combichrist gig?

Oh Yeah! For sure. I’ve been saying this the whole time, without the fans we would be nothing. Definitely we have some of the best fan base in the world. I mean I’ve seen a lot of fans with other bands and I think personally we have some of the greatest fans in the world. These great, great people give great energy and people are loyal to us for what we’re doing and appreciative of what you’re doing. Of course that makes everything worth it. It’s worth the two hours sleep and the 15 hour drive you know? It’s really… Everything comes together, it’s really, really great and it shows.

The scene really seems to be developing in the North East of England at the moment, and you put on quite a show at the Sunderland date last year given the change in size of the venue are you expecting this will affect the experience?

I have no idea; I never really set any hopes or expectations for any shows whatsoever. You set up and until you walk on stage it’s just another day of setting up, just another new day and then the show itself is. It lives in itself. It creates its own life somehow. That’s when it all comes together right? Whatever happens before you come onstage doesn’t have to mean anything for the show itself and the venue doesn’t mean anything to the show itself. The size of the show does not mean a thing. The second we go onstage that’s when you set the temperature for the show, so I really don’t have any expectations or any hopes or anything for the show until the second I go on.

Given that some record labels are cutting back on physical releases, especially in the industrial genre, how important is it to you to have that solid Combichrist disc out there?

I think it’s a hate and love thing because it’s in one way I want to hang onto a physical release with my dead cold hands. It is something that was so important when we started, that you have that physical, official release, at this point, as it is right now I think the physical things like cd’s, vinyl, and t-shirts, whatever, all these things; it’s a great thing but I don’t really focus on it off tour. It’s rather something I focus on on tour so that people can get their hands on something physical because I know myself I’ve gotten so lazy about it I just go, ‘oh, iTunes…’ y’know right? It’s gotten to a point where it’s actually like, and I can only speak for myself, but I never download anything illegally anymore, at all because everything is so accessible, pretty cheap too. It’s actually getting more complicated to get something illegally than to download something another way. It’s like ‘That’s a great album, I’ll go on iTunes and go buy it”. You don’t even think about it any more. Most of my music is just the digital that I buy from other bands. But then again, if there’s a band that I really like I do go out and see their shows, I do pick up the merchandise, I do get the limited edition box set, I do get the physical copies even if I have the digital just because it’s a memory of  something from the show. It’s a memory as a fan where you go and see a band that you’re a fan of I will pick up something because that way there’s something physical, not only the music.

You’ve been streaming the new single ‘Never Surrender’ online. Would you say the sound of the song is representative of the upcoming album as a whole?

I don’t think it does at all. The only reason I say this is I feel the new album is so diverse so it’s hard. Actually let me take that back, maybe it is a good representation because it does have a lot of the influences from the rest of the album, but it’s very much like a summary of the other things that you have in there. There’s a lot of electronics but there’s also rock going into it, also a little bit melodic, y’know, a little bit aggressive and I think maybe as that songs got it all the rest of the album is kind of spread out to more different styles. I’m not sure. The whole new album is like I said; I kind of put all my influences together to Combichrist now rather than Combichrist and Panzer AG. I kind of put it all together and it’s more my personal album. It’s almost like you could say, a concept album, not story-wise but putting everything together is like alright, I’m done with this, I’m done with that, I’m putting it all together.

What can you tell us about the concepts, story and inspiration for the new album?

It’s really kind of a continuation of Today, We Are All Demons where I was basically going very deep inside of myself and facing my own demons. It was a pretty rough patch of my life and things seemed to go a lot better after the album, like my personal life so I had to put myself into a dark hole to write this album to dig out the rest of all of the shit that was in my life, the shit that I wanted away and out of myself. It’s definitely the most personal album so far.

Do you think it’s been kind of therapeutic to get it all out?

For sure. I mean, I think it’s important as a musician and as a writer to face all of these things in your life and not just pass it by because unfortunately misery is way more inspiring than happiness

Very true!

It is and even for a positive song, it’s a good help to have something that is negative for us in life to help you write and remind you of the good things to be able to write something positive.

Do you feel the online Combichrist Army is a significant part of the Combichrist experience and what does it mean to you?

It means a lot to me because they are the people who are the most dedicated to Combichrist. They are the people who nonstop, between shows there are people who are there doing stuff every day and being a part of it. That was the whole idea behind The Combichrist Army, instead having a fan club kind of thing to have people rather being a part of what we’re doing and to shape what we’re doing too and they kind of shaped their own kind of community around it. It’s a way for us to interact with people in a different way rather than just here you go, this is the fan club with people shaping it themselves, making their own shirts, doing their own thing, basically shaping the band for the future.

There has been quite a lot of talk about how influential Combichrist has been on the entire scene, do you feel you have been influential and in what way?

I think the only thing I can say that I’m aware of is that the main thing from the very beginning on is what I said earlier is that every single time when I’ve been writing something I’ve been writing it for my own sake and for what I want to do rather than what’s popular or rather what I think people want to hear and I think unfortunately a lot of bands do have the tendency to try to become something rather than to try to make the music they want to make. So if somebody gonna jump on a band wagon they’re gonna make something sound like something that’s already popular to gain some popularity themselves. I think maybe, hopefully, we have been a good example of how you don’t have to do something that is already popular. You can do something that is not popular and make it popular. You don’t have to be afraid to do something new, you don’t have to be afraid to release an album that sounds different to your previous one because if it’s good people will like it and that’s kind of been our whole thing the whole time. Maybe that’s why we sounded different from than most other bands in the scene at times because we changed before it was popular. I don’t know how to explain but hopefully the main influence from us has been to inspire bands to do what they want to do.

Is that the biggest piece of advice you would give to somebody starting in the scene and wanting to start their own band?

I think that the best piece of advice I can give anybody who’s starting up is to do exactly what you want to do and not necessarily to go to the clubs to get inspiration but find out what it is that you want to do, find out what you’re good at, how do you write, what are you best at, what can you write and still be able to perform without being boring or are you able to translate your music live in a different way or at least in the same way live as you do on an album. Just to be honest with yourself and ask what’s my capacity, what can I really do? Don’t bite off to much and do what other people can’t do. Start with what you can do and what you want to do rather than trying to make something that you are not.

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